


Wrote My Way Out

by mxstyassasxin



Series: 24 for my 24th [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Azkaban, Draco kept journals, Gen, Implied/Referenced Torture, Lucius Malfoy Being an Asshole, POV Draco Malfoy, Post-War, Short One Shot, Wizengamot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-08
Updated: 2020-05-08
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:08:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,734
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24073462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mxstyassasxin/pseuds/mxstyassasxin
Summary: First of my birthday works inspired by songs I enjoy. This one inspred by Wrote My Way Out (Nas, Dave East, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Aloe Blacc).Draco Malfoy is awaiting trial in Azkaban and he knows that only his journals can save him. Will the Aurors find them and who will read them?
Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter
Series: 24 for my 24th [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1736755
Comments: 4
Kudos: 72





	Wrote My Way Out

Draco had gotten quite used to writing out his thoughts during the war. During all his time at Hogwarts really. It wasn't as though there he could have shared them with anyone, especially not during sixth or seventh year when the Dark Lord was in residence at the Manor.

Now, staring at the blank wall of his cell, he would give anything to have something to write with. Something to write on. The only entertainment he had all day, every day, were his own thoughts. And he couldn't even do anything with them. He couldn't write to dispel the nightmares he woke from, sweating and shaking as his screams went ignored. But even worse, he couldn't record the good memories that would suddenly come to him. His mother's voice as she reassured him, as she called him darling, looked into his still innocent eyes and told him how proud she was of him. The glee that had come to him when he saw a flash of raven hair flying from Hagrid's arms. The acceptance he now felt remembering the time Granger had struck him across the face.

He thought of all the journals and scraps of paper that were currently stuffed into a box, in a bag, in a panel in his wardrobe. All of it hidden from prying eyes because those pages detailed names and acts along with his feelings and thoughts. Despicable names and despicable acts. Years of his unwilling participation in a war that was his father's ambition and his aunt's amusement, So many people willingly doing what he never could, and punishing him when he couldn't.

He didn't know how long he had been staring at that wall when he was eventually brought to trial. It could have been days, it could have been weeks, maybe months. There was no way to tell the passage of time in Azkaban. He would just sleep and stare and think, occasionally being roused for a bowl of something that had no name.

As he stood in front of the Wizengamot, hands bound, head bowed, he registers that there had been no mention of his journals. Potter speaks, Weasley and Granger too, but the Wizengamot refused to be moved. And there was still no mention of his journals.

They don't know, he realised. They haven't found them. The Aurors that searched the Manor cannot have found the box in the bag in the panel in his wardrobe.

So, he tells them. He speaks for the first time in the hours that he has just stood there, and they adjourn his trial. He's taken to a holding cell in the Ministry. He knows that if they don't find the journals, he's screwed.

But they do. They find the journals in the box in the bag in the panel in his wardrobe. They are all lying there in front of the Wizengamot when his trial is resumed. They have already been discussed in private, so he has no way of knowing what they paid attention to. What comments the different members of the Wizengamot made about which events.

He is released with a suspended sentence but also with pitiful apologies and gratitude for the provision of new information. His journals mean that the Aurors can bring in those who have escaped arrest and he is horrified when he realises that one of those people is his father. He had been quite enjoying his so-called house arrest at their villa near Marseille with his mother, having pleaded ignorance and imperius, pushing all his faults onto Draco, letting the child rot in prison for crimes committed by the father.

Draco wallows at the Manor for the next week, ignoring all his mail, setting the letters on fire as soon as they fall from the talons of the owls, shutting down his floo. His only glimpse into the outside world he allows himself is the Prophet's reporting of who else has been apprehended, knowing that he's done something right at last.

The reporting of his own trial, subsequent release and the reason why, made it into the Prophet only when the Ministry allowed it, not wanting to scare any remaining Death Eaters into disappearing forever. The letters increased but he continued to burn them. A few people tried to come and see him at the Manor, but he turned every one of them away.

Until one visitor arrived at the gates announcing themselves as ‘Phoenix Publishing’.

"No. Mimsy, send them away," he orders once again.

His only remaining house elf returns a moment later to tell him that the representative has not left. They insisted on remaining at the gates. Well, let them. They would get bored eventually and leave.

What Draco had not accounted for, considering he had never been able to master the spell, was their ability to spend the remainder of the morning sending patronus after patronus. An annoying little sparrow that flapped around his head wherever he was. And there was no getting rid of it.

"Right! That's it!"

He marched down the drive of the manor to the gate, determined to give whoever it was a piece of his mind, only to find a cheerful, elderly lady on the other side of the gates with eyes and a voice that he imagined a grandmother might have once spoken to him with.

"Now is this any way to keep an old lady waiting, Mr Malfoy?" She had the audacity to smirk at him, eyes glinting with mischief. 

"You must have been in Slytherin, Ms..." he enquired.

"Please call me Esme, Mr Malfoy. And yes, I was. I'm now the CEO of Phoenix Publishing House."

"Don't call me Mr Malfoy. Draco, please."

"Certainly, Draco."

He invites her in and serves her tea and they talk. And talk. It was nice and Draco hadn’t realised just how much he'd missed it. The company. It didn't even matter that, eventually, he knew she would bring up the reason for her being there. That she wanted something from him. After all, everyone always did in the end.

"I want to offer you something, Draco. I want to give you the chance to tell your story, publish your journals."

Well, that wasn't exactly the way he'd expected it to come out. He scoffed.

"And what would you get out of it?"

"The chance to give a young, pained Slytherin his life back." She smiled her endearing smile at him.

"And a percentage of the profits? I know how this works, Esme."

"Only 10%. The rest you can do with what you will."

"I don't need it. I just need the story out there. People need to know. There's so much that people still don't know." He thought for a moment. "We sell it for as little as possible, you take 10% and the rest goes to charity. To the rebuilding efforts. To the orphans and the bereaved."

"Deal, but I expect you there at the release."

"Alright."

They get the journals back from the Ministry, he makes sure it's all of them and appeases them by making copies of all of it, but places protections on them that ensure no one else can copy it.

The journals and notes are placed in chronological order, all of them, every single piece of information, and Draco makes additional notes on the things he understands more now, drawing links between events that had seemed so separate back then.

The book is released at Flourish and Blotts when all those who had been apprehended because of his information were still in Azkaban awaiting trial. The Ministry doesn't like it but screw the Ministry if they were more willing to believe his father over a scared seventeen-year-old.

The store is packed. Granger is there, of course she is, and Potter and Weasley at the back. They're all dressed inconspicuously with charms on their most distinguishable features. It doesn't stop Draco from recognising them though. Not when he's been at school with them for seven years. Not when he knew it was them at the Manor. It's only Granger out of the three of them that approaches the desk where he sits to buy the book. She meets his eyes, he notices she's kept them brown, and he nods at her in a gesture full of acknowledgement and respect and apology.

Three days later, he is in the library at the Manor when Mimsy informs him that there is a visitor requesting to come through the floo in his personal drawing room. He never sets foot in the main one anymore. Too many bad memories.

It's Potter.

He's holding Draco's book tightly, certain pages dog-eared at the corners. It makes him cringe and he wonders if Granger would have the same reaction. It's probably the copy that she bought after all.

"I didn't know, Draco. I had no idea. None of us did."

"That's the point Potter. If I could have talked to anyone, that book wouldn't exist."

"But the things they did to you," he trails off and Draco hates the pity and guilt written across the face of the saviour.

"It happened Potter," he says through gritted teeth, managing not to cringe at the emotion he sees in those green eyes focused intensely on him.

"And after you refused to identify me, they, they did... _that_." His voice was so small, in such contrast to the anger Draco had experienced from it at Hogwarts.

"Yes, Potter. Compared to that, what you used on me in the girl's bathroom was nothing." He saw the other boy flinch at the memory but carry on, ignoring Draco’s snarkiness.

"You knew they would, but you still didn't say anything."

"No." It was that simple.

Potter drops the book on the marble floor where it lands with a thud, the pages fluttering open, and reaches Draco with a few quick strides across the room. He pulls Draco into a hug, all his gratitude, pain, guilt and relief flowing through it.

"Harry," Draco whispers, not knowing what's left to say, not knowing how else to apologise.

"No, you don't have to say anything else. You've already said it Draco. It’s all over those pages."

So, Draco just wraps his arms around the skinny boy in return and rests his chin in the mess of raven hair. And, for the first time, in a long time, he lets himself really breathe. 


End file.
